Legislative leaders — disgusted by the waste, the incompetence, the stupidity of the McCormick regime — now are calling for appointment of a chief operating officer to oversee budgets at Rutgers.

Isn’t it appalling to be singled out as an exemplar of waste…by Trenton politicians? Isn’t it more appalling that they are right? Rutgers is riddled with unnecessary expenses, featherbedding, and bloated salaries.

Congratulations, Dick McCormick, Rutgers even is on TV as a poster child for a foolish pursuit of bigtime football at the expense of academics.

Dick and Big Bobby Mulcahy told us they would put Rutgers in headlines — and indeed they have!

As New Jersey struggles with a billion dollar budget deficit, we urge you to make some of your first and deepest budget-balancing cuts in the funding for Rutgers. This represents a sharp reversal in our past positions but the evidence mounts that Rutgers under President McCormick simply wastes money and is not deserving of the public trust or the public’s dollars.

We also urge you to take steps to correct this and to put Rutgers back on a course to academic success:

* Appoint fiscally prudent people of substance to the Rutgers BoG, which currently is largely populated by lightweight dimwitted jocksniffers.

* Instruct President McCormick to fire Athletic Director Robert Mulcahy for cause, immediately.

* Instruct the Board of Governors to fire President McCormick for cause, immediately.

* Dismiss the BoG chairman, Rev. William Howard, Jr., immediately. The man is an embarrassment.

For our part, as concerned Rutgers alumni, we will withhold all donations to the school until the above four steps occur.

We also urge all New Jersey high school seniors who have Rutgers on their short list of schools to make plans to attend university elsewhere. Rutgers just is not very good and it is going to get worse before it gets better. A decade of ruinous policies has left the school a wreck and it will take a new president and several years of hard work to reverse the McCormick-Mulcahy decay.

It pains us to write these hurtful things…but this is the sorry truth and Rutgers will not begin to get better until these truths are recognized.

That is how the NYTimes titles its editorial on the current ugliness at Rutgers. The Times explicitly says: “while Mr. McCormick did not create the mess, he did nothing to clean it up. If he knew what was going on with the football program, he was negligent by not stepping in; if he didn’t know, he should have. This leaves him a choice: put the brakes on the stadium project and immediately clean house at the athletics department or resign and make way for someone who will.”

Quoth the Record: “AN internal report has finally said what critics have been saying all along: Rutgers University has failed to take charge of the decisions and spending of its athletics department, especially when it comes to football.

The review, released last week, used words such as “inadequate,” “insufficient” and “uninformed” to describe the glaring lack of oversight. Leadership by Rutgers President Richard McCormick was described as “limited.” Athletic Director Robert Mulcahy was described as acting with “vigor” but in an “increasingly insulated and ultimately counterproductive manner.”

Gannett meantimes writes: Rutgers sports fiscal overhaul just a first step. Gannett says: “Rutgers University Athletics Director Robert E. Mulcahy III was given virtually free rein to negotiate and execute sports-program contracts, leading to a breakdown of internal financial controls, a self-conducted review by the school has concluded. Critics of the Rutgers administration are incensed by the findings. With good reason.”

We have questions and the biggest is, why are we still discussing the obvious?

McCormick needs to be fired and he needs to take Mulcahy with him.

McCormick arrived on the Banks on a lie — he was in fact fleeing termination by the Univ of Washington — and his tenure since has been stupid and futile. Mulcahy, of course, was himself on the bounce from a failed post. A fine pair they have made, as they have plunged Rutgers into fiscal absurdity and the ruination of an academic institution.

Fire them both. Now.

Alumni have no choice but to withhold all donations, pending their removal from the university. That is how bad matters have become.

That’s per the NYTimes story on the release of the report into Rutgers athletics, from Schiano’s salary increases to the stadium expansion. Reports the Times: “There is ‘no question that the president’s failure to exercise fully his ultimate authority on these matters, to seek the counsel of the board in certain instances, and to test the basis of [athletic department] decisions exacerbated this situation,’ read the report, which also sharply criticized the athletic director, Robert E. Mulcahy III.”

What is clear is that McCormick turned a blind eye as the bumbling, Ahabesque Mulcahy plunged into ever more delusional and incompetent action — and left to pay the price are students who see their university crumbling for lack of funding.

Clean house by, first, firing Mulcahy and then dumping McCormick. There’s a start on reviving Rutgers.

NJ’s budget shortfall is now estimated at $1.2 billion and climbing, per today’s bad economic news. That’s triple the estimate of just a few months ago. Mid-year funding cuts apparently will be needed…Dick McCormick are you listening? The Rutgers budget will be cut and that means every penny of the millions wasted on football comes directly out of the academic budget. Supporting football is a vote for worsening academic mediocrity (and a mediocre football team, too). It’s that simple…and horrific. Just say no to more waste on Mulcahy’s “middling time” sports gulag.